Will Mark Thompson Be CNN’s Magic Bullet?: “If He Can’t Make This Work, Then No One Can”

 

Will Mark Thompson Be CNN’s Magic Bullet?: “If He Can’t Make This Work, Then No One Can”

During the South by Southwest festival in March 2016, I was at a crowded shindig on the back patio of Easy Tiger, an Austin beer garden, chatting with Mark Thompson, then the CEO of The New York Times, which had commandeered the venue for the weekend. 

Thompson didn’t look like some corporate square infiltrating the boozy masses. He was dressed down, with his sleeves rolled up and a glass of red wine in hand, merrily imbibing with his colleagues. 

It had been about five years since the Times began charging readers for digital content—a pivotal strategy kickstarted under Thompson’s predecessor, Janet Robinson—and at the time, more than a million readers had gotten on board with the effort. I asked Thompson how many additional readers he thought could be convinced to pay for the Times on their laptops and smartphones. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t aspire to a digital-subscriber count of many millions,” he told me.